An Empirical Study Of Influence Of Differences Between Chinese And English Thought Patterns On College Students' English Writing

Writing is an essential part of English teaching,however,Chinese college students'English writing is still dissatisfactory.There are prominent traces of translation from Chinese to English.Chinglish problem is the root which results in that college students' English writing is not totally idiomatic.Moreover,English teachers in China pay much attention to students' English vocabulary and grammar.Although Chinese college students make great efforts to learn English vocabulary and grammar,they still have poor performance in their English writing.The main reason lies in that students' thoughts are confined to their mother tongue.Chinese thought and language habit are applied to their English writing.Therefore,it is necessary for Chinese college students to realize the differences of Chinese and English thought patterns and to express in English thought pattern on the purpose of outputting excellent English compositions.Only when Chinese students make a breakthrough of Chinese thought constraint,can they radically improve their competence of English writing.Language,thought and culture are tightly related.Language is the carrier of thought and thought is a conscious activity of human brain reflecting and recognizing the objective world.Thought pattern is the foundation of all cultures.As we all know that there are various cultural systems in the world,which are made up by various thought patterns at root,while,writing tends to be a linguistic activity and a thought activity as well.Thereby,it is of great significance to conduct a study on the influence of thought pattern differences on English writing.The study of the differences of Chinese-English thought can promote the advancement of college students' English writing ability.Therefore,the differences between Chinese and English thought will be studied in this thesis as the root cause.The thesis aims to study what the specific embodiments of differences between Chinese and English thought patterns are,and how teachers cultivate college students' English thoughts in order to make their English writing idiomatic.At first,this thesis briefly states the background and significance of the study.The literature mainly reviews the studies of second language writing,the relationship of thought and language at home and abroad,the contrast of Chinese and English thoughts as well as English writing and thought patterns.In theoretical part,the author introduces Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis,the definition of thought pattern and the typical manifestations of the differences between Chinese and English thought,namely subjective and objective thoughts,circular and linear thoughts,synthetic and analytic thoughts as well as image and abstract thoughts.The author designs an empirical study from the perspective of the four thought pattern groups mentioned above.Participants are chosen from a certain college in Xinzheng City,including Chinese college students and native English speakers,and are asked to write respectively English compositions with the same designated title.Based on the several thought patterns,the author employs the qualitative analysis.In the process of data collection,quantitative analysis is employed to study the influence of the sample compositions from the four aspects:position of the thesis statement,sentence types(animate subject sentence and passive voice sentence),discourse pattern and use of conjunctions.As a result,college students tend to put their thesis statement at the end of their compositions.Animate subject sentence and active voice sentence are frequently used in their compositions.The discourse patterns are correlative,and students seldom use conjunctions to purse the coherence of their writings,while,native English speakers are inclined to put forward their opinions directly at the beginning of their compositions.Inanimate subject sentence and passive voice sentence are frequently used.Moreover,their discourse patterns are separated or detached.They emphasize use of conjunctions which conform their logical expression habit.Based on the study results,the author puts forward some suggestions to cultivate English thought,such as to improve the knowledge storage English teachers in Chinese and English thought patterns,to encourage students' deep reading and to combine reciting and imitating.This study is of a certain meaning for English writing of college students.